about

I've always found it strange to write the "about me" sections of my sites. The first thought usually has to do with choosing between first person, or third. Third is most likely the right one, but is so detached at the same time, not so much about me but about this fictional "she".

So for a change, I chose first, and here we are, chatting so amiably. Second, comes choosing what to type. I mean, I am certain no one wants an extremely detailed account of my life and deeds, so what would be the highlights? Perhaps through a theme? Art could be the theme, as most of you are here probably because of my drawings, but aye, this is a tricky subject, as I can't really find a stretch of time in my past in which art wasn't somehow directly related to what was going on in my life.

Going with the flow will have to be the answer, yes it will. Starting from the start, I was born in Buenos Aires, under the Sign of Capricorn, during one of the hellish summers we have here. Shortly after, I was given pencils and paper and books by my mother. That was the start of this all.

I never actually sat and said "ok, I think it's art and words what I want to devote my life to", but I did reject and threw tantrums against anything that could ever threaten my artsy time, so I guess good ol' me had made her choice before all the questioning started and she had been doing all the studying by herself without me really noticing it. When it became something conscious, there were no more tantrums because there wasn't anything else.

(and here we are again in third person, in case you haven't noticed, but it's difficult to talk about a past me in first, so bear with it)

When I was about 13, I had the brilliant realization that comic books actually mixed two of my passions by combining story telling with art (I must have reached this moment of illumination while reading one of X-Men's books. I have memories of reading Fierro when I was between 4 and 6, but little me wasn't as taken, even when it was, of course, rather surprised by the content) and that they could deal with character development and drama and tragedy and GASP!

(plus Gambit was oh, so sexay)

That was it, I was caught again. The same year Saint Seiya started airing on tv, and that was the finishing blow. Mythology, drive, all this epic stuff, more tragedy, more drama, all this mixed with strong characters and OMG everything was so beautiful and alive.
There was no way out. And really, hasn't been. I could go all snobbish and make a list of the very serious books that have influenced my way of thinking. I could talk about how anthropology and ritualism also make me, in a completely different way but that is so tight up with art that it shows up all the time. I can tell you that religious symbolism and Japanese graphic design are things that influence me hugely, and that sex and death are all over my work, always very elegantly, not always very seriously, even when I am both extremely serious and not serious at all.

I could tell you that war correspondent and diplomat were my other career choices, the ones I would have followed if baby me had never been given paper and pencils, and we would never be here, going all blah blah over myself.

I could also be a real bastard, and write a manifest about the way I see the world, and try to sound all politically incorrect while adding all the difficult words I can think of that no one uses in regular speech about things I don't actually believe in nor live by, but who cares as it would make me seem so awesome.

I could do all that (well, except the manifest), and this would be a very different "about me" section; but truthfully, in all raw honesty, it all began to click with X-Men, and took final and absolute shape with Saint Seiya. Many artists have influenced me since and before that time, many subjects have caught my interest, and life is and has been an eternal surprise full of challenges and gifts and wonderful and terrible human beings. But the determination to be here and do this, the choice that pulls everything together, was somewhere there, waiting to be triggered the day I saw that big red logo in characters I could not understand, and this weird spanish opening song going on and on about the song of the heroes.

Anything else is a mixture of the consequences that followed and are following, and the things that came before that and led me there.
All that I am is out there, mixed with what I write, with what I draw and the way I live. About the why, feel free to blame the heroes. I do ;)

technicalities:

name: Paula Andrade

pen name: derrewyn, (d)

(I sign stuff with either my penname or given name, depending on the mood and mostly due to random reasons. I sometimes also sign them as gretel d., but that doesn't happen that often)